Hello and welcome to this podcast from Teacher magazine, the resource for K-12 educators published by ACER, the Australian Council for Educational Research. I'm Rebecca Vukovic.
This week we're celebrating Australian Primary Principals Day – a chance to recognise the incredible work happening in primary schools across the country and the dedicated teachers, support staff and principals who make it possible. To mark the occasion, I sat down with Anthony Boys, Principal of Marist Catholic College, North Shore in Sydney, a co-educational kindergarten to year 12 school. Our conversation explores the vital role principals play in shaping school culture, supporting teachers and helping young people thrive. In this episode, Anthony shares his approach to instructional leadership, explains how distributed leadership works in practice at his school, and reflects on his involvement with the Menzies Leadership Foundation and the influence it has had on his own leadership journey. Let's get started.
Rebecca Vukovic: Anthony Boys, thanks for joining me today on the Teacher magazine podcast.
Anthony Boys: You're welcome. Thank you.
RV: Anthony, you have a unique perspective of leading a school that spans from the earliest years right through to year 12. That gives you that sort of broad view of how young people grow, how they develop and learn over time. What do you see as the key differences between leading a junior school and leading a senior school? And what are some of those lessons that leaders in each setting have to learn from one another?
AB: Leading a K-12 school gives you a rare vantage point as you described. You get to see the full arc of human development, in my case from 4-year-olds to almost 19-year-old students. That full arc of human development, from the wonder and openness of early childhood, through to the complexity and aspirations of adolescents. Yet to me the work feels continuous. But the leadership demands shift really quite significantly across the different stages.
In the junior school, the leadership is deeply relational and foundational. Young children experience school through the emotional climate we create; the sense of safety, sense of belonging and sense of joy. They're the 3 things that particularly stood out for me. Primary leaders shape that earliest narrative that children form about themselves as learners. The work in primary school is highly visible. Families are close partners. Teachers collaborate intensely and wellbeing and learning are inseparable. You're constantly asking what are the conditions that I can create to help a child feel known, capable, curious, safe and loved.
In a senior school setting, the leadership becomes at times more future-oriented and instructional. Not always, and not always entirely different from primary school, but can become more future-oriented and instructional. Adolescents need challenge, they need relevance and they need a stronger sense of agency. The work in a secondary setting can be more about aligning curriculum, more about aligning pedagogy and pathways so that students can see themselves and a future that they're building. Senior school leaders must hold complexity of academic pressure, identity formation, post-school transitions, while ensuring that teaching remains rigorous, evidence-informed and responsive.
But I do think, to your question, that [what] leaders can learn from one another, primary and secondary, is quite powerful. I think primary leaders can remind us that belonging precedes achievement and the emotional climate of learning matters at every age. And secondary leaders can remind us that high expectations and intellectual stretch are acts of care, not acts of pressure. So, across a whole-school context in which I currently reside, I've learned that continuity matters and cohesion. And when a child experiences consistent culture, language and expectations from K-12, their confidence grows and they feel held by a community that knows them deeply, and that's a great space for children to be coming into school.
RV: And of course, Anthony, as we celebrate Australian Primary Principals Day, it's a timely reminder that primary school leaders play like an incredibly influential role in shaping children's early experiences of learning, belonging and success. What do you think are some of the most important responsibilities of a primary principal and why does that role matter so much in a child’s educational journey?
AB: I think primary principals shape the beginning of a child's educational story. And so that responsibility is enormous and privileged and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful responsibility. And the most important responsibilities, I think, include creating a culture of safety and belonging, building strong foundations for literacy, numeracy and curiosity, because these are the gateways to future learning. Supporting teachers to be expert observers of learning. It's my experience that primary teachers notice everything and principals must honour and develop that skill and honour that interface that the primary educator is.
To partner with families and build trust between home and school – that's formed early and lasts for a school lifetime. And protecting childhood, ensuring that learning is joyful, playful and developmentally appropriate. Primary principals matter because they shape that first chapter of a child's identity as a learner and when early experiences are positive, the children will carry that confidence, I believe, into their adolescence. When they're not, then we spend years trying to rebuild what was lost in that time. So, I think that speaks to some of the responsibilities of the primary school principal.
RV: Yeah, definitely. And as you just said, you know, as principal you are responsible for creating those conditions that enable both the teachers and the students to thrive. And so much of that comes back to instructional leadership. So, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about that now. What does effective instructional leadership look like in your school context?
AB: I think for me, Rebecca, instructional leadership is about creating conditions where great teaching thrives – probably I should say great leadership too, but where great teaching thrives. It's not about being an expert in every classroom, but It's about ensuring that teachers have clarity, support and trust. They're probably the 3 things that I particularly note in instructional leadership: clarity, support, trust.
I think it looks like, I think further to your question, what does it look like? I think it looks like a relentless focus on teaching and learning. And I think it's one of the 5 drivers of collective efficacy that we've spoken about. I think it looks like clear expectations for high impact practice. So, where is it grounded in evidence? Where is it aligned across a cohesive K-12 curriculum? And it looks like structures that enable collaboration, enable shared planning time, enable instructional coaching, and that enable cross-campus professional learning.
RV: Yeah, fantastic. And Anthony, I see that many schools are moving away from the idea of leadership resting just with those few individuals and more towards that collective approach where expertise is shared across the organisation, of course that being the school. What does the ‘power of the collective’ mean to you and how have you seen those strong outcomes emerge when leadership is distributed across an entire school community?
AB: Rebecca, you mentioned there the ‘power of the collective’. The power of the collective – it's not a slogan for me it's a really powerful statement. So, thank you. It really sits at the centre of my leadership philosophy. I think I'm convinced that improvement doesn't come from individual heroes and it comes from shared expertise, and professional trust being shared and aligned efforts across a professional learning community. We speak about collective efficacy and in the article that we authored, we spoke about a shared belief of a group in their collective ability to achieve a desired result.
And further, when a belief is present, everything changes. The strategy becomes a narrative. Teachers take risks, teachers share practice, teachers challenge each other's thinking, and they stay relentlessly focused on student outcomes. The distributed leadership that you refer to at Marist, for me, looks like teams and groups of people owning their improvement cycles supported by evidence and inquiry. It looks like middle leaders driving pedagogical clarity, not middle leaders just being administrators. It looks like teachers leading professional learning, modelling that vulnerability and expertise. It looks like students contributing to [decision] making, especially around wellbeing and engagement. And it looks like leaders creating structures that make collaboration inevitable, not optional.
And I guess that's a big point for me. In terms of outcomes, I suppose the strongest outcomes I've seen probably sit around improved literacy growth, high levels and strong levels of student engagement and a more consistent pedagogy. And that's emerged when the leadership is shared and not held tightly. Hence that leading from the middle piece I think is critical.
RV: Yeah, fantastic. And that paper you mentioned at the beginning of your response, of course, I'm going to ask you about that in a little while. But before I do, I want to talk a little bit about your involvement with the Menzies Leadership Foundation, because they've worked closely with the Australian Council for Educational Research on leadership development initiatives. There's also a personal connection there through Dr Kerry Elliott, a Research Fellow here at ACER, who's done work with Menzies as well. Can you tell me a little bit about your involvement in Menzies and how it has influenced your leadership philosophy? I'd love to get a sense of what lessons have come from that experience that continue to shape the way you build that collective capacity within your own school.
AB: It's a hard question on the basis of that my involvement with the Menzies Foundation has been profoundly one of the most formative experiences of my career. The fellowship has given for me the space, the provocation and the intellectual companionship to think deeply beyond the day-to-day demands of school life. Three influences of this Menzies Fellowship stand out for me, I think.
The emphasis on adaptive leadership, Rebecca – understanding that complex problems require collective intelligence and adaptive skills, not just technical fixes. The focus on purpose and narrative – leaders must articulate a meaning, not just a strategy. And thirdly, the connection with ACER and Dr Elliott in particular, Kerry's work on collective efficacy and her provocations to me around collective efficacy have profoundly shaped my thinking. And that's ultimately led to our continued collaboration with that paper that we produced.
So, I think as well, Rebecca, Menzies taught me that leadership is not about being in the centre. It's about building the capacity of others so that the centre becomes shared or in a sense the centre of the circle just gets wider. It reinforces to me that culture, trust and clarity are the real levers of school improvement.
RV: So, let's now talk about that paper that we've mentioned a few times, because I know that one of the things that I found particularly interesting about your work is that you're not only, of course, leading the school, but you're also contributing to the research literature. So last year you co-authored a paper (Boys et al., 2025) with 2 researchers from ACER – that was Dr Kerry Elliott and Julie Murkins. I'm wondering what prompted that collaboration with ACER and what were some of the key insights that emerged from the project that challenged or affirmed your own thinking about leadership?
AB: Yeah, just to go back, in a word it's that continued provocation that was generated out of this Menzies Fellowship. But the collaboration really with ACER and Dr Elliott and Julie Murkins really came from a shared curiosity from the 3 of us. A curiosity around, how do schools make strategic planning live? So, the word ‘live’, I’ll just reflect there, is not be static and not be a document or not be a compliance exercise. So, one of the questions that was profoundly striking, I think, for all of us was: How do we make it a lived and a living exercise, and a document that shapes culture, daily practice and decision making in relation to improvement?
Working with Kerry and Julie was for me really energising. They both brought a very deep research expertise and, because of where I sit on a daily basis, I probably brought some very contemporary and lived experience of leading a complex K-12 school. ACER, led by Kerry and Julie's work, have explored almost 700 school review reports and investigated the patterns that shape effective strategy. And, for us, the insights that came from that very significant study have challenged and affirmed some thinking. That is that, school improvement strategy itself is a system and not a sequence and schools are an interconnected group of ecosystems themselves. A change in one area has a capacity to ripple across the whole.
The second piece that challenged me in this was that culture is a real determinant of strategic success and that misaligned culture derails even the very best plans that are made. Aligned culture can accelerate improvement. And so, for me, the writing and the investigation that we did affirmed for me that collective efficacy isn't an optional extra, it's a strategic pillar that makes improvement possible.
RV: For me, when I was reading the article, a really strong theme that I found was that idea that improvement doesn't come from those individual heroes, but from that collective effort, shared expertise and professional trust, which is so much of what we've been talking about today. I'm wondering for any school leaders listening, what are some practical ways that they can build collective efficacy within their own teams? And can you share an example of what that has looked like in the practice at your school?
AB: Yeah, I think one of the things that I like to do and encourage my colleagues to do is ‘catch kids doing good’. It’s a pretty casual statement, but catch them when they're doing well and affirm them for it. I think, in a similar vein, collective efficacy grows when people experience success together. So as a leader, we're acutely responsible for catching that success or directing that success, or finding where successful things are happening. And I think that when we can see and experience success together, it develops this understanding of shared purpose.
Second to that, I think, Rebecca, it's built through intentionality. And we referred to it in 3 ways, like the intentionality of mindsets, skillsets and toolsets. And that framework gives practical ways that you can build it. So, to your question, the practical ways I think we can build it is by fostering deep relational trust, creating safe spaces for challenge, for dialogue and vulnerability. A great statement that Kerry would often make through the Menzies Fellowship conversations was ‘attack an issue, never a person’. And so, as a group of professionals, why can't we create safe spaces for challenge and really open dialogue, and for us as leaders to be really vulnerable in those spaces and ask some very genuine questions.
I think we need to establish shared purpose, and we need to consistently articulate the why repeatedly and consistently. And I think that's really critical. I think as leaders, we need to provide the structures for collaboration – the time, the protocols, the coaching and the inquiry cycles. I think that's critical. Not just to say that collaboration is important, but build in the time, build in and model protocols for collaboration that's appropriate, put coaching and mentoring spaces aside there and what inquiry cycles that we're working through. I think we need to be judicious and use evidence wisely, Rebecca. Evidence is not only to judge, or not necessarily to judge, but it’s to illuminate the impact. So, asking questions around evidence and key questions around evidence is really important. And I think to keep the focus in regards to this question on learning and teaching, and other things as being secondary – again, let's stick to the issue, not the person.
So, a concrete or a more concrete example in my K-12 context has been a literacy improvement cycle and that the teachers across Marist here have engaged in a shared professional learning journey where we've used common assessment tools, we've analysed student work together and we've trialled high impact strategies. And the result was not only improved outcomes, but a palpable shift in belief where teachers really saw that their collective effort had changed the learning. And for me, that was one example of collective efficacy being in action and purposeful and having a really positive impact on our community.
RV: Yeah, that's a really great example and there were some fantastic tips there that other school leaders can practically implement into their own settings. So, thank you for that. And of course, Anthony, Australian Primary Principals Day is an opportunity to recognise but of course celebrate the contributions of principals across Australia. As we've said quite a few times now, we know that it's a role that comes with tremendous responsibility, but also that enormous influence. What message would you like to share with any school leaders who are listening today and what do you think they should be most proud of in the work they do every day?
AB: Well, firstly, thank you. Thank you to every school leader. To the school leaders that are listening, your work matters more than we may know. You carry enormous responsibility for children, for families, for your staff and for your community. And as a primary principal, you do it with courage, with compassion and conviction and thank you. Primary school principals shape culture, you create safety, you build hope and you open futures for our children.
I'm firmly committed that you should know that you should be proud of the way in which you hold complexity with grace, the way you protect childhood and champion adolescents, the way that you nurture teachers and inspire their belief, and the way that you stay committed to your purpose, even when the work or the noise can be quite heavy and burdensome at times.
As you know, leadership is rarely a glamorous exercise, but it's a profoundly meaningful one. And so, to the primary school principals, I would say you continue to build the conditions for human flourishing and that is very sacred indeed, sacred work. And thank you.
RV: What a brilliant note to leave on. I couldn't have said it better myself. Anthony Boys, I really appreciate your time and have loved the opportunity to speak with you today. Thanks for sharing your work and your insights with Teacher magazine.
AB: You're most welcome.
That's all for this episode. Thanks for listening. A link to the research paper we spoke about today is in the transcript of this episode over on our website. On behalf of the Teacher magazine team, we want to wish all the school leaders listening a happy Primary Principals Day and thank you for all the important work you do. If you loved this episode, please take a quick moment to hit follow on your podcast app and leave us a review. Both of those things help more people like you to find our podcasts and they're a really big support for the Teacher team. We'll be back with a new episode very soon.
Teacher magazine is published by the Australian Council for Educational Research.
References
Boys, A., Elliott, K., & Murkins, J. (2025). Living strategic planning: Leveraging collective efficacy for systemic improvement. Australian Educational Leader. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.T2025031900009991107754468
Reflecting on your own leadership practice, how effectively are you creating the conditions for teachers to thrive through clarity, support and trust, and what evidence do you have that these conditions are making a difference?
Anthony Boys suggests that collective efficacy grows when people experience success together. How are you deliberately creating opportunities for staff to collaborate, celebrate progress and see the impact of their collective efforts on student learning?
